Failure to report score

[awm]

In the last round of a swiss team event, team L left without reporting their score.

 

The director eventually realized the score was missing and that no member of team L was on hand. He approached their opponents (team A) and asked what happened; they seemed somewhat confused but the director gathered that team A won by 14 IMPs. He entered that score into the official results.

 

The next day, one of the members of team L told the director that in fact his team had won by 14 IMPs. After some further investigation, the director determined that this was in fact the case. What should he do?

[matmat]

I don't suppose a public shaming and flogging of both teams are options?

[pran]

In the last round of a swiss team event, team L left without reporting their score.

 

The director eventually realized the score was missing and that no member of team L was on hand. He approached their opponents (team A) and asked what happened; they seemed somewhat confused but the director gathered that team A won by 14 IMPs. He entered that score into the official results.

 

The next day, one of the members of team L told the director that in fact his team had won by 14 IMPs. After some further investigation, the director determined that this was in fact the case. What should he do?

This is unfortunately not uncommon with Bridgemates. I stress the importance that the contestants are not allowed to leave the table until they have received "End of round" or "end of session" on the bridgemate, and that both sides are subject to PPs if a score has not been entered. (North for not entering scores, East for not confirming the entry).

 

I have had situations like the one described above, and when the correct score could not be established without severe delay I invariably impose a PP of up to 1 VP on each team. (This conforms with our standard PP to the home team for failing to report results in time when done on paper).

[Vampyr]

I don't suppose a public shaming and flogging of both teams are options?

 

Why both teams? The losing team is not required to do anything.

[campboy]

This is Law 79C. Unless there are additional regulations, the default correction period is 30 minutes after the scores are posted, so it sounds like you should not change the score. I wouldn't give team A a penalty unless I thought the error was deliberate; it seems harsh to give team L an extra penalty if you are leaving the erroneous score in.

[gordontd]

Why both teams? The losing team is not required to do anything.

They are expected to have an accurate result available for their opponents to agree.

[gordontd]

There's something odd about this situation: the winning team are meant to hand in both cards (isn't that universal?) Yet one team who thought they had won just went home, and the other team, who claimed they had won when asked, made no attempt to agree the score with their opponents or hand in the scores. Unless it was all down to the director's misunderstanding, Team A don't seem so blameless to me.

[ArtK78]

Team L won the match, but did not report the score and left the tournament. The director inquired of Team A, Team L's opponent. There was some confusion, but the director obtained what he or she thought was the result of the match, with Team A winning by 14. Upon later investigaion (the next day), it turned out that the actual result was Team L winning by 14.

 

I agree with campboy. Rule 79C specifies that, unless the sponsoring organization specifies to the contrary, the correction period ends 30 minutes after the scores are posted. So the result stands.

 

Team L has no right to complain. It should have reported the correct result of the match before leaving the tournament site. At the very least, it should have checked that the correct result of the match was reported to the tournament staff before leaving the tournament site.

 

There is no reason to penalize Team A unless it is determined that the incorrect result was reported deliberately. That is hardly likely, as Team A had to be sought out to obtain a result of the match. I assume that this was because the losing team is not given the obligation to report the result of the match. This should have given the director some pause. At the very least, after determining that Team A won the match, he should have asked why Team A did not report the result. Still, I would not penalize Team A with any score correction. If it is later determined that one or more members of Team A deliberately falsified the score of the match, the offending players should be subject to disciplinary action.

[blackshoe]

The first time I played in a Swiss Teams, my teammates appointed me captain. I didn't know it at the time, but the convention here is that the winning team's captain agrees the score with the losing team's captain, and then gives the winning score card to the TD for scoring (or both scores, but the TD is typically unconcerned about the losing team's card). So we won our last match of the day, the losing captain comes to me and we agree the score. Then she offers to take our (winning) score card and turn it in. I let her. On the way home in the car, one of my teammates asked "didn't we win our last match?" The others concurred, and then she pointed out that the final result tally had us losing (by the same number of IMPs). When I got home, I called the TD, but he wasn't available. Knowing nothing about correction periods at the time, I called back several times over the next two months, but he was always unavailable - out of town, sick, whatever. When I finally did get hold of him, of course, he told me it was way to late to do anything about it. He said he'd thrown away the score cards, in fact. I was for a long time convinced that the TD assumed because the opposing captain brought the score up, hers was the winning team, although the niggling thought that she (the captain) had deliberately miss-reported the result kept cropping up. IAC, I've never again allowed the losing captain to report the score.

[paulg]

There's something odd about this situation: the winning team are meant to hand in both cards (isn't that universal?)

No. I've only played in ACBL Swiss Teams events at NABCs but the scorers just expected a single results slip detailing the winning team and margin. Teams do not have scorecards as you do in the EBU.

[kenberg]

"the director gathered"... This means? The team that was present had a captain? He can report a score? In a clear voice? The whole crew, including the director, sound incompetent.

 

If the option exists, I would give neither team any credit for any match that they played that day and tell them to clean up their act.

[joostb1]

There's a problem with this poll: you can't choose two options. I would restore the result, provided there is enough evidence to do so, but that would not let the team that left without reporting their score of the hook and I give them a PP.

[awm]

There was certainly a high degree of incompetence all around (director and both teams); this was a club game and also rather late at night.

 

The poll is designed so that you can select two or more choices. To me it seems quite reasonable to assess a procedural penalty in addition to a score.

 

This was actually a sort of strange swiss team event, in that the field was small and the winning score was pretty bad. Prior to this match, neither team L nor team A was doing particularly well in the standings. This was very disappointing for team L (one of the better teams in the event) and more expected for team A (one of the weaker teams). However, the other matches somehow all ended up very close and team A's "win" caused them to end up in first overall! This caused a lot of exclamations of surprise from other teams (not involved in the situation). In particular, if the table result was restored team M (a third, uninvolved team) would end up winning with team L placing second. So there is a pretty substantial effect on team M who are in all ways blameless.

[shintaro]

Restore correct result

 

Then fine BOTH teams 1VP

 

Both teams as the winning captain takes the results in and even though L had not done this;

 

A said they had won 14 VP's so they thought they had won and should also have taken in the result

 

Or Team A are trying it on to claim what they are NOT entitled to

 

So Either way HANG em BOTH :D

[barmar]

The ACBL Swiss Team score slips have a place for you to circle WIN, LOSE, or TIE. This implies that the correct procedure is for both teams to fill out slips, and they should complement each other.

 

In practice, the more common procedure is for just the winning team to fill it out, confirm with the losers, and turn this in. They generally indicate the confirmation by initialing the slip (although there's no space marked for this, further suggesting that this is not the intended procedure).

 

Some losing captains continue to fill out slips, but as someone said above, the directors just toss these. If I'm confirming and they hand me one of these, I toss it and forge their initials on my slip (it's not like anyone ever actually checks the initials -- most often they aren't actual initials, just a little squiggle).

[Bbradley62]

I don't suppose a public shaming and flogging of both teams are options?

Why both teams? The losing team is not required to do anything.

The losing team is expected not to lie to the director when asked about the result.

[Bbradley62]

0 VPs to both teams for the last round.

 

That probably has no basis in the Laws, but I like it anyway. :P

[mrdct]

the winning team are meant to hand in both cards (isn't that universal?)

I don't think it's universal. I've played bridge in a dozen or so countries and I've never seen that procedure.

 

As for how to handle this case:

 

- Assuming the correction period has passed, there is no choice but the leave the incorrect scores as entered so bad luck for Team M;

 

- As the event has been run and won, applying procedural penalties is going to be of no use to anyone, however both Team A and Team L do need to suffer some pain. I suspect Team A just made an honest mistake or there was some sort of miscommunication so I think a mild reprimand would be OK. For Team L, I think their behaviour is far worse and should probably attract a one week suspension.

[awm]

Apparently the correction period for a STAC game (for which this qualified) is until 24 hours after the end of the tournament. Correction period for regular club games (via club policy) is until the next time that event is played (basically one week). So this score was technically within the correction period.

[bluejak]

There have always seemed dangers in this single card result method. The EBU method seems far preferable where each team has a single card for the event which contains match results and a running score and is returned to the teams to put in their next result. Errors of this sort are far less likely so long as the TD checks the running score as he should.

 

Back to the problem, I just wonder about team A. They "seemed confused but the TD gathered they had won by 14 imps"? That sounds to me like TD error in fact. Why did he not say "Your opponents have gone, please fill in a slip"? Instead he took a verbal report and got it wrong.

 

My impression is that team L and the TD were at fault, but not team A.

 

If it was inside the correction period, correct the score, penalise team L.

 

If it was outside the correction period, apologise profusely to team M, snarl at team L.

 

Then tell the club to get some assignment cards from the EBU and use them in future.

[awm]

After some discussion, the director decided to restore the table result and penalize team L by 6 VPs (which dropped them out of the overalls, but they still get match awards).

 

As a member of team L I can perhaps comment a little bit on what happened. The team captain is a very regular player at the club, who was playing with a hired pro. Usually the pro turns in the match results (when team L wins). But for some reason he decided to leave prior to even comparing scores for the last round (he actually does this fairly frequently; guess he needs to be home for some reason). I was on the other pair and somewhat out of it (it was late, has been a long few days) and figured that I hadn't handled comparisons and results for any of the other rounds I would not need to do anything this round either. My partner was worried about her ride home and had to rush out and make phone calls and make sure things were in order. So we left it to our team captain -- but she hadn't turned in a score all night and didn't realize it was her job this time either!

 

Obviously this is a big screw-up and I have no real issue with the director's final decision. Some of the other possibilities suggested seemed uncalled for though (ban our team from the club for a week? let the misreported result stand?)

[blackshoe]

You would have to let the misreported result stand if the Correction Period had expired. Apparently it had not, so correcting it should be routine.